


Your feet carry the second heaviest burden of your body

by bardsknight



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dimidue Week (Fire Emblem), Dimidue Week 2019, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route Spoilers, It Starts Sad But Then It Gets Happier, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Timeskip (Fire Emblem: Three Houses)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-08-30
Packaged: 2020-09-29 23:07:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20444075
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardsknight/pseuds/bardsknight
Summary: As the latest researches had brought new light on the topic of Crests, it was found out that children who bore either a minor or a major Crest were more likely to show their soulmark in the first months of their life – as opposed to the rest of the people of Fódlan, whose mark appeared at around their tenth birthday.A little Soulmate!AU for Dimidue Week 2019.





	Your feet carry the second heaviest burden of your body

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This fanfiction was inspired by the Dimidueweek prompt Soulmate!AU.
> 
> I have not played the game yet but I lived through the life of a fe3h streamer, so please bear with my lore mistakes. I tried my best with the knowledge I got from the fire emblem wikia. There are some headcanons too I made some notes for in the end notes, but I wanted to point out right now that I took some liberties with Duscur language.
> 
> English is not my native language, so feel free to point out any mistake I made! I never stop learning new things and I love it!
> 
> I hope I did them justice, at least a bit!

As the latest researches had brought new light on the topic of Crests, it was found out that children who bore either a minor or a major Crest were more likely to show their soulmark in the first months of their life – as opposed to the rest of the people of Fódlan, whose mark appeared at around their tenth birthday.

The Church based in Garreg Mach had declared that all the marks had been gifted by the Goddess more than a thousand years before, as a reward for all the people who’d taken part in defeating Nemesis and his allies. It was said that the connection between two souls would help and create an endless stream of links between people, which would build and strengthen a defense against a future foe. The legends read that the Goddess would blow a breath on the sleeping kid and then even a small, unnoticeable letter would be written on their skin, but it was not unheard of children bearing no mark – though their birth was often seen as an ill omen.

That was the Goddess’ last word, truly the sign of a thread that bound people to each other.

That was the reason why the mark had many names: it could be a seal, a sign, a curse, a scar. Every culture of Fódlan had a special term for it, though soulmark or skinmark were the most common ones.

Since they were a very intimate and personal topic of discussion, scientists had always had an annoyingly difficult time researching this curious phenomenon: any most recent piece of information had a resonance greater than all the other news about new technology or wars in far-away lands.

To cut it short through the sea of papers and academic discussions, the pressure on the little, newborn shoulders bearing a Crest was terrifying, especially when the kid was bound to be the heir to the throne of one of the three powers of Fódlan: thus it came as no surprise that when the Queen consort of the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus gave birth to a crested child, the whole kingdom both celebrated the good news and started talking about the boy’s soulmate: who would the lucky girl be? Had she been born yet? Was the name on little Dimitri’s skin a common or rare name?

What had sent the palace into shock when the soulsign had first appeared was that the name on Dimitri’s left foot (an uncommon place for a mark, indeed, but King Lambert had found out while playing with the boy in their room some time after the death of sweet Adelchisa) did not bear any letter of the alphabet of Fódlan. In fact, it did not resemble anything the king had ever seen, which could bring questions and rumors about the prince’s destined one.

In this time of doubt (and fear: what if Dimitri’s soulmate were a person on the other side of the world, what if they were an enemy, what could he do?), King Lambert declared to the public that the boy had not shown any seal on his body yet, while he instructed his most loyal scholars and mages to search for this foreign script with the utmost discretion. Once the time was right he would tell his son everything he knew: but then something had already started slithering, unnoticed, wrapping its dark and poisonous fingers around the Blaiddyd dinasty.

───

Dimitri came to know of the soulmark on the sole of his left foot some years later: of course he’d noticed it before, but had been told that everything related to it would be revealed at a later time. It was one of the things that Rodrigue had spoken about long after the Tragedy of Duscur, and perhaps the only one that Dimitri wanted to remember clearly, since the spectre of the King had started tormenting him with the perfect details of his face and voice, but he only spoke about revenge. There was no sign of affection left by his father, except that little sequence of mysterious letters on his foot and the research he had supported in vain for so many years (and still, that was love meant to be from somebody else, not from his father). Dimitri bore no ill will against King Lambert, but somehow—he felt like there could have been a stronger connection between them if that mark had been of a Fódlan name. He could have given his father less sleepless nights if he’d had a Faerghus name written on his foot – King Lambert could have died with the certainty that his child would perpetuate the Blaiddyd lineage with a noble and proper girl.

Dimitri was torn between the hate for the Goddess’ curse and the relief of knowing that the mark was worthless, since only a few, loyal people knew of it; he could find a suitable partner and just marry someone the fate did not approve of; he could live without the burden of a decision made by some kind of superior being.

(_… Now, if only he could start_ living_ again—_)

───

“Dedue, I would like to ask you something.”

“Anything, Your Highness.”

“I don’t know if it is improper to say, so please do tell me if I am overstepping some boundaries.”

“There are no questions I would not answer to you.”

Dimitri sighed. It was relaxing to watch Dedue tending to the flowers in the greenhouse of Garreg Mach with such delicate care. “In Fódlan, most of the people have a sort of scar on their body that bears the name of their soulmate: not everyone does, and some have more than one mark on themselves. I was wondering if something similar happened to the people of Duscur as well.”

Dedue, who had been watering some pink geraniums, suddenly stopped and gave His Highness his complete attention, but did not want to speak yet.

Dimitri added: “I’m asking because there is a legend that involves the Goddess and Saint Seiros gifting the soulmarks to the people, and you have told me lots of stories about the different gods of the Duscur pantheon, but I’ve never heard of one where a god gave the mark to a human.”

There was a short pause, in which Dedue put the watering can back on its shelf. Then, he said: “In Duscur, people bore no such mark, except in one case: when their soulmate was not from Duscur. When this kind of situation happened, a choice was given: they could leave and search for their soulmate, or continue living as if the initial of their mate never appeared.”

“Only the first letter of their name?”

“Yes. The Goddess of Fódlan only offered the first letter of the name of their soulmate. Sometimes the initial of their surname as well, but it was uncommon. It was said that this distinction in treatment between people of Fódlan and Duscur was caused by the different set of deities the two lands worship.”

Dimitri’s doubts about the Goddess – and the Church – only grew. While he was reflecting upon it, Dedue added: “To lessen the hurt of the ones who bore such mark but did not want to leave the land, Duscur people started tattooing the names of their beloved, or the name of something that was a link between the spouses, on their body, on the day of their wedding. The most talented artisans would also draw over the Fódlan letters some Duscur ones for those who bore a soulmark but decided to marry someone else.”

Then something clicked for Dimitri. Of course the Duscur script would be different from Fódlan! But at the same time King Lambert surely had checked it with the Fhirdiad scholars, and if they had not found any connection with it—

Was he missing some piece of information, or was his own soulseal not Dedue’s name?

… Wait, would he even want his mark to be Dedue’s name?

Then Dimitri blinked once, twice, three times, and remembered how to breathe correctly. He felt like an epiphany had just revealed itself in his brain and his stomach (which did a splendid somersault when he noticed that Dedue was still looking at him with a calm gaze), and this discovery bathed him in a pleasant, warm light. His head felt weightless and his neck became tense like a violin string – probably because it had to keep his head up, just like a commoner would squeeze their head between their shoulders to protect the skull from any danger.

A moment of trepidation: what did Dimitri think of Dedue, exactly, now that he realized something new about himself? There was some sort of uncertainty in his mind, mostly derived by his own self-consciousness on the matter of affection. Where did the line between saviours and lovers cross the passage of time? If this was just the moment when light was shed on something that had been kept into the dark, when precisely did Dimitri start falling for Dedue? The depth of the abyss had always been unfathomable in his eyes, but was it always the same pit of desperation, or were there two ravines to fall into, one sweeter and softer than anything he could think of?

There were too many questions and he had too few answers at the moment. He needed some time for himself; he desperately wanted to think that his soulmark was not a curse, and that his father might have been incredibly surprised (and possibly not too sad), were it the name of his saviour on his foot.

“Is everything alright, Your Highness?”

Dimitri nodded. “Yes, Dedue. I was just thinking about the way the Goddess behaved towards different people, and how lowly she acted towards Duscur. It is not fitting for a deity.”

“We are taught to remember that the gods are double-faced. The good deeds of the Goddess of Fódlan were made by the same hands that hurt and destroyed. No one has brought only happiness, or only woe, in this world.”

And oh, how well both of them knew that.

───

Dimitri wasn’t feeling good, at that moment: he wasn’t feeling bad, either. He was just reflecting upon what he’d learnt that day – about Duscur, Dedue and himself.

Was it truly—love?—for Dedue, that thing Dimitri felt in his eyes? He wondered how it must feel, for a short-sighted person, to put their glasses on every morning, and if it was similar to what he was experiencing: not a sense of horror or self-hatred for things that looked deformed until they were put into shape – but rather, a sense of security, where everything had a clear place and distance. A feeling of wonder for old, familiar things.

This revelation filled Dimitri with peace in a time of his life when tranquillity had not been an option – granted, it would not last long, but the moment had to be savoured because if he could not taste all the dishes Dedue made for him in the Monastery kitchen, he would at least bask in the lingering flavour of happiness and serenity.

It was like another step forward in the healing treatment of their Tragedy.

───

(Some things fell into place when Dimitri realized he had been falling, too. The landing was soft but made him cry, nonetheless. They were tears of joy. Dimitri wondered whether the soulmark on his foot had absorbed the shock of the fall, somehow.)

───

He never asked Dedue if he had a skinmark – he could not, it was improper, to say the least, for a number of reasons. (He was embarassed a bit, too.) What he _could_ do now, though, was to ask Dedue about the name on his foot: that would be less embarassing than making weird faces when asking inappropriate questions, right? Right?

Dimitri was not entirely sure he wanted to know the truth – what if it was Dedue’s name? _What if it was not?_ But then, a few nights before, he’d realized that Dedue had seen the beast within him and had not faltered. It was foolish not to trust Dedue on this matter, since it was Dedue who had saved him, so many years before, and had kept saving him every day after the Tragedy by staying at his side.

If death’s graze had not moved Dedue, why would affection or love make him waver?

That is why one Sunday of an autumnal Moon, during their year in Garreg Mach, when Dimitri and Dedue were about to leave the thermal baths of the Blue Lions to get to their respective dormitory for the night, Dimitri checked that no other student was there and asked: “Dedue, could you please stay here for a few more minutes? I need to ask something to you.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Well, now Dimitri could not retreat. Good thing his body sometimes worked on its own. They sat on one of the benches of the dressing room. Their silence, as usual, was not uncomfortable.

“Do you remember when we spoke about soulmarks?”

Dedue nodded. He seemed calm.

“I have one, under my left foot. I’d like you looked at it, see if it reminds you of something, because no one in Fhirdiad was ever able to tell me what the letters say.”

“I don’t think I would be of much help, Your Highness, but if it gives you comfort, I shall do it.”

And so Dedue looked at the mysterious sign on Dimitri’s foot. Dimitri actually forgot to breathe, since his whole being was trying so hard to find balance on the thin strings of his heart. Dedue seemed pensive, but then he shook his head and replied: “I have never seen such letters.” Then, Dimitri’s heart plunged into the abyss – the one made of desperation: the fall seemed excruciatingly fast. “I never learnt how to read—”

“Do not worry about it, Dedue. It was just a foolish thought. My father never found out the meaning of this word, and I shouldn’t have asked—”

Then there was commotion in the corridors, and the voices of Felix, Sylvain and Ashe made them both resume their task: they dressed quickly and with no words. And as smoothly as a cloud that had changed shape because of a different wind, then turned back to its previous form, they fell back into their usual routine without any more discussions on that matter.

In truth, it did not change their relationship: but they both began picking up on some of the ways they reacted to each other. Dimitri started noticing how gentler Dedue’s hands and words became when talking to him; Dedue realized just for whom the prince’s smiles were (and they were for Dedue, surely, since His Highness had always been grateful for Dedue’s presence, but they were for Dimitri himself too, because it feels liberating to just love someone to lessen the hurt of an affection without recipient). It was not something that they started doing after their conversation in the baths: it had always been there between them, and they just needed a suitable pair of glasses on their eyes to see it.

───

When Dedue woke up after Dimitri’s escape from the cells of the royal palace of Fhirdiad, the first thing he thought was that he was _not _supposed to wake up. Then he started hearing the voices of people he did not recognize, and only at that point he realized they were speaking Duscur.

_I was not supposed to live_, he thought again before slumping into a sleep full of nightmares.

When he woke up for a second time, the face of a stranger greeted him. It was a tall, blond woman with a tired smile on her face. She spoke fast and moved faster to remove the bandages to check on the wounds.

“Where are we?”

“In the viscountcy of Kleiman – which means, in our homeland, Duscur.”

This was when Dedue understood where he would stand for at least quite some time. He could not exactly feel his legs or his arms. “What happened in Fhirdiad? Did the prince of Faerghus escape?”

The woman suddenly looked at someone in the distance, where Dedue could not follow. She shouted, and then added: “The commander is coming to see you. He will explain. Then you will get your hair cut, because we need to heal this thick skull of yours.”

Dedue was given a simple explanation from the commander: the people of Duscur would never forget their grudges, nor did they fail to honor favours. Which was the reason why he could not reach Dimitri yet: he had been given a second life, and if it meant that he had to wait before he could see His Highness again, he would. He’d been ready to sleep forever in order to save him, so he’d suffer, but would not succumb to pain. The people of his land were a sort of palliative to him, compared to the medicine that Dimitri was for his heart – but at some point in the first of those long, five years, they had also given him hope, more precisely when an old Duscur teacher noticed how short his hair was and then taught him how to read and write the Duscur language.

───

It would take Rodrigue’s life for Dimitri to learn that the dead did not consider him guilty of anything. It was somehow catharthic to witness how kind Rodrigue sacrificied himself to pull Dimitri, who’d always felt so deeply for those who had no voice, up and away from the slimy hell of a solitary self-hatred. Dedue saw a burden getting lifted from Dimitri’s shoulders to the pink skies of sunset, and that was it. That was when Dedue realized how strongly he clung to their existence like never before – in the middle of a war, drenched in blood, he felt himself tightly attached to life. This, too, was catharthic, and the way Dimitri had looked at him at the end of the funeral, right before looking to Felix who had just lost his father—there Dedue saw the eyes of a man ready for anything, even living.

That was it. In a few days, when Rodrigue’s death would be a heavy stone in their lives (because heavy stones fear no weather, and hard lessons are rarely forgotten) he’d get his answers and give the ones he had.

“Your Highness.”

“You know my name and that I encourage you to say it when it’s just the two of us. We had that discussion earlier today, Dedue.”

Dedue nodded. “Dimitri, I have an explanation to give to you about the mark on your left foot.”

“An explanation?” Dimitri looked surprised, but most of all a bit hurt.

“Apologies for my choice of words. In the five years we have been apart, I’ve lived with my people, in Duscur territory. During my stay there I met a teacher who taught me how to read and write Duscur. I am confident in my abilities now.”

“But you said you’d never seen those letters before—”

“It was the truth. But this man told me things I did not know about Duscur and the history of Duscur alphabet.”

There was nothing warmer than the revelation dawning on Dimitri’s face – how his eye blinked for one, two, three times, his breath stopped and his hands started trembling a little in their gloves. His voice did not falter, but he looked on the verge of a joyous laugh. “Well, it would be inappropriate not to have a bath before this explanation, would it not?”

Dedue smiled. “Yes, it would.”

“Then let us wait until we return to Garreg Mach.” And it sounded as if he’d said _I have waited for my whole life, a few more days will not consume me_.

And they did not consume anything at all – rather, they sparkled life into the old routine of the prince and his vassal friend and fanned the flame of a new-found closeness. There was something unsaid, but it felt pleasant and not at all worrying. When the time came, it wasn’t rushed: the attendants had the water warming up and running, and Dimitri and Dedue bathed with the rest of their old classmates and friends turned brothers in arms, just as they used to five years before.

“So, Dedue, what is the meaning of this mark I have on my foot?” Asked Dimitri, once they were in the dressing room and Ashe had taken Felix and Sylvain away with him. He lifted his foot in the air and Dedue gently brushed a finger on the sign. (In his defense, he did not know His Highness was ticklish, and anyway, his punishment was a light hit on the nose.)

“I’ve been taught that Duscur language underwent three different phases in its script: the first one wasn’t really an alphabet, but more like drawings of things that also had a specific pronounciation. Then came the first alphabet, composed of runes. It is believed that it came with the people of the Northern lands across the sea. Then the last one is the one currently used _(and oh, how sweet Dedue looked in Dimitri’s eyes when he spoke about Duscur in a present tense)_, which is an alphabet that has letters only for consonants, while vowels are indicated by little lines or points around the consonants. About the first one not much is known, and much had already been lost after the Tragedy, but around five-hundred words, mostly about funeral ceremonies, were saved. I learnt them.”

Then there was silence.

“Whatever my mark means” Dimitri said, in a whisper (and he’d thought about these words for a few days now), “if it isn’t your name, I will care about it no more.”

Dedue hardly looked at the sign on Dimitri’s foot: he remembered the design by heart. “It comes from the first script of Duscur. Two symbols are merged into one: it would translate to a mixture of _scar_ and _whole_, or _healing_.”

“… The scars I got from protecting you are the testament of my salvation—” Then Dimitri stopped talking, breathing, blinking, trembling.

Dedue laid Dimitri’s foot on the floor, then he delicately removed the band that held his ponytail together and parted his hair on the right side. Under some of the longest white strands there were two little, though unmistakable, letters that spelt _d_ and _a_. “I got my hair cut while I was in Duscur, and it was pointed out that I had a mark below _the bush that you insist on calling war ponytail, _as said by the lady who healed me. It must have appeared while I was already in Fhirdiad, so no one noticed.” Then Dedue looked back at Dimitri and added: “While the sounds of the symbol that makes up your soulmark do not translate to my name, maybe the Goddess decided to gift you with something that we have in common. We both saved each other, and we both bear scars that are proof of it.”

_I have to, I have to_—

Wild-eyed, like a cat who’s been fed its favorite food after a long time of starvation, Dimitri caught Dedue’s hands in his and squeezed. “I am—overwhelmed, Dedue. It makes so much sense.” He’d spent such a long period of his life thinking the mark was just a cruel joke of an uncaring deity, who did not want to give him and his family peace, and then—

“It’s fitting, for us.”

And when they kissed, just a few seconds after (and they had never kissed anybody else, so it was messy and confusing and terriflyingly wonderful), their mouths fit perfectly as well.

**Author's Note:**

> “Value your knees: they carry the second heaviest burden of your body, after your heart.” It is a quote I found somewhere, at some point in my life. It just struck with me. If you know something about the person who said it, please let me know. I’ve been looking for them for a long time. For this story I have modified the quote a bit to match the topic.
> 
> Are there baths in Garreg Mach? Well, there are now, for the sake of this fanfiction. I kinda imagine them as the baths in the Ancient Roman culture whoops.
> 
> Adelchisa is the name of one of the children of Adelperga and Arechis, two nobles of the Longobards of the VIII century. I thought it could be a nice name for the Queen consort of Faerghus.
> 
> About the soulmark: I had to find a place where Dedue wouldn’t see it for years, while a father could. The sole of the foot is something adults do not usually see, but a father with a small kid probably would because of little games or cleaning or dressing the baby up or whatever, so… that came to mind. I thought about other body parts, like the inner thigh, but it was too difficult (imagine a battle and healers strip him down to watch the extension of the wounds, and see that. It would not do.) I needed a stupidly unseen place. Sorry, I always come up with weird ideas. Whoops.
> 
> Why the left foot? Well, there is a thing called contrapposto in visual arts (Greek statues come to mind) and Dimitri got an eyepatch on the right side, so… I told you I’m weird like that.
> 
> This fanfiction had me writing almost non-stop for two consecutive nights. I blame Dimitri and Dedue because they deserve the happiness of their paired ending and I could not resist. ALL THE LOVE TO THESE BOYS. <3 I had to get this story out of my system. It just would not let me live my studying life properly.
> 
> It's 2 AM and my brain is fried but I feel blessed anyway.
> 
> I hope you liked it: do let me know! I’m planning some more fanfictions about them (some in my native language, but I guess I will translate them into English someday), and I’d like to know if it would be a welcomed plan. Thanks for your time!


End file.
